AUSTRALIA: Two young Australian men spent 22 hours in a tree above rising floodwaters after a crocodile killed their friend and "showed him off" to them as it held the body in its jaws.
Mr Shaun Blowers and Mr Ashley McGough, both 19, spent the night keeping each other awake in case they fell into the water where the four-metre animal that killed their friend Mr Brett Mann (22) was waiting.
The three friends had gone quad-biking on Sunday near an abandoned tin mine beside the Finniss river, the first large river south of the Northern Territory's capital, Darwin.
They were washing mud off their clothes when Mr Mann was swept away in waters swollen by rains brought by a recent cyclone. "Brett went out just a little bit further, it was a real sandy bank and just lost his footing and got swept away," Mr Blowers said.
"We both jumped in and swam after him and we got in front of him and were leading him back to the bank. I went past the croc, I didn't see it. Ashley screamed out 'croc, croc'. We just swam to the nearest tree and straight up we went."
The crocodile took Mr Mann by the shoulders and disappeared. Saltwater crocodiles, known as salties in Australia, normally drag large prey underwater to drown them.
"We were looking around for Brett, didn't hear a thing, didn't hear a scream, no splashing or anything," Mr Blowers said. "Two minutes later the croc brought Brett to the surface and pretty much showed him off to us, and off he swam. Five minutes later he was back stalking the tree around us.
"He just hung around us all night and pretty much all the next morning," he said.
Police found the bikes on Sunday night but did not locate the men until Monday morning. The extreme conditions meant rescue services had to lift the pair out by helicopter.
"During the evening it was so dark they couldn't see themselves," said a Northern Territory police spokesman, Mr John McCourt. "They wouldn't have had any idea whether the waters would rise or fall. If they rose they'd probably have been done for."
Mr Blowers' father, Greg, said Mr Mann was "the best bloke I've ever known". "I just hope the rangers can find it and get our old mate Brett back, and put a bullet in its head," he said.
Police called off their search for Mr Mann's body last night in poor weather conditions. Swollen rivers during the Northern Territory's wet season vastly increase the territory of saltwater crocodiles, making the hunt for the killer crocodile difficult.
There are believed to be up to 150,000 saltwater crocodiles scattered across the north of Australia, with nearly half them in the Northern Territory. Numbers have increased dramatically since the species was brought close to extinction by aggressive hunting in the 1950s and 60s.
Attacks are a fairly regular occurrence, with the most recent fatality taking place last October when a German tourist was killed while having a midnight swim near Kakadu national park.
The Finniss river is well-known among Australian crocodile watchers as the home of the infamous Sweetheart, a 5.2-metre crocodile that attacked several fishing boats in the mid to late 1970s. Coming at the time of the first Jaws film, Sweetheart's exploits turned him into a local celebrity. His skeleton has been preserved in Darwin museum. - (Guardian Service)